


Dark Night, Still Morn

by coppertears



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Art, M/M, Models, Photographer!Chanyeol, Pining, Slow Burn, Strangers to Friends to Lovers, one sided!Chanyeol/Jongdae, reluctant model!baekhyun, yeolliepopday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-11
Updated: 2016-06-11
Packaged: 2018-07-14 10:21:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7167254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coppertears/pseuds/coppertears
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All he wants is to capture this moment in time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

  
**Dark Night, Still Morn**  
Chanyeol/Baekhyun  
PG-13

Written for [](http://ethereal-r.livejournal.com/profile)[**ethereal_r**](http://ethereal-r.livejournal.com/) for the [](http://yeolliepopday.livejournal.com/profile)[**yeolliepopday**](http://yeolliepopday.livejournal.com/) exchange. [](http://uponinfinity.livejournal.com/profile)[**uponinfinity**](http://uponinfinity.livejournal.com/) walked with me from the beginning of the tunnel to the end. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Black. White. Light. Dark. Black. White. Light. Dark. Black. White. White. Light. White. Black. Dark. Dark. Dark. Dark --  
  
Park Chanyeol feels the edges of his consciousness crumble into shadows, and he lowers the camera that he’s raised to eye level. Sunset washes the room in cornfield yellow. A few feet away from him, his subject is leaning against a backdrop of orange satin, her body covered in yards of white muslin. Dark hair spills across half of her face, her gaze silent, eerie even, as she takes in the sight of Chanyeol looking far less lost than he feels.  
  
“It’s not working, is it?”  
  
Chanyeol shakes his head. The girl, Soojung, sighs and starts winding the cloth up her arms and down her legs, twisting and pulling and wrapping until it resembles a dress. She stands up, her feet still bare.  
  
“I guess that’s it,” she says, tilting her head. “It doesn’t matter how beautiful your subject is. You’re just not that inspired these days.”  
  
“I don’t know what’s wrong,” Chanyeol says, frowning as he makes his way over to her and begins unpinning the satin from its wooden frame. He feels it slide against his fingers -- soft, gentle to the touch. He’d spent days trying to find this fabric, downtown where the people flowed in streams and intersected within the walls of every shop. There was a single roll of it tucked three rows to the back of a seamstress’ place, the shade of the orange reaching out to him through curtains of dust motes and the light of flickering bulbs. It reminded him of autumn, of a flame dancing on a candle’s wick, of the skies when the sunset bled its life through the clouds.  
  
Even something like this cannot call back his muse.  
  
He doesn’t know where it is. He doesn’t know if he’d dropped it by the wayside one day when he thought he could do things on his own -- that he could look through the lens and see a story worth telling. Maybe his muse had fallen in a tub of developer chemicals, processed into a 4x4 square photograph with corners sharp enough to leave scars.  
  
Next to him, Soojung shifts from foot to foot. His best friend is a beautiful girl, Chanyeol knows. Part-time model, full-time heartbreaker.Somehow they’d both been hoping that taking pictures of someone whose facial structure the fashion world had lauded would set him back on track.  
  
“Maybe you need to take a break.” Her voice is staccato. It is a sieve, never holding that much emotion, but Chanyeol knows the concern that writes itself beneath the surface of Soojung’s skin.  
  
“The gallery wants to exhibit new portraits,” he says, taking out the last pin. He and Soojung watch as the satin falls from the frame. “They need them in a couple of months. I can’t just take a break.”  
  
“Take a walk, then. Maybe your muse wants you to do landscapes instead of portraits.”  
  
Chanyeol chuckles. “I don’t have any interest in doing landscapes, Soojung. Nothing against those who choose to do so, but I want something human. Someone human, with a story threaded into every feature.”  
  
The corners of Soojung’s lips lift up. “So you’re saying I don’t have a story?”  
  
“You do,” Chanyeol says. “But I don’t know how to tell it.”  
  
His best friend is quiet. The cornfield streaked across the floorboards turns into roses. Outside, Chanyeol hears the sounds of cars on the mad rush home.  
  
“Just put away your camera for a week,” Soojung says after a while. “If you’re not always thinking of what something will look like through your lens, maybe your mind will be freer. Less restricted.”  
  
Chanyeol exhales. “Maybe.”  
  
The two of them stand there, until dusk opens its petals and floats down to cover the world. Then, in the moonlight that pours through the windows, Chanyeol and Soojung leave the studio.

 

 

 

Three days after Soojung tells him to put away his camera, Chanyeol decides to do it. It’s unsettling how he’s grown used to the weight of it, to the strap that chafes against his nape, and his hands skitter across his pants in an attempt to chase away the nervousness he feels about leaving his camera behind. The morning’s bright and awake when he steps out, and he catches himself thinking about proper aperture settings. Chanyeol shakes his head at himself.  
  
His daily routines often consist of walking through the city, leaving traces of himself on asphalt and wooden surfaces. There’s something about the hustle and bustle that makes people less prone to keeping their masks on. Maybe it’s the heat, melting off their guards; maybe it’s the friction of body brushing body, wearing away the thin veneer of pretenses. Either way, he finds his subjects swimming through the chaos, their stories pulsing in their irises.  
  
Today he feels disconnected, hesitant. The world through his eyes is not as magical as the world through his lens. It feels as though something is missing as he pushes past fruit vendors and window shoppers. He can’t see the stories anywhere. All he finds are people with walls hovering in the air around them, unwilling to let him take a peek. Chanyeol doesn’t want this. He feels like a thumb hanging off of a foot, a toe growing on a spine. Out of place. Unwanted. Unnecessary.  
  
He contemplates calling Soojung, but he knows his best friend will roll her eyes and tell him to call her when he has more substantial problems. In the typical voice she adopts when he’s doing something she can’t make sense of, she’ll tell him that it’s all in your head, Dobi, all in your head.

“Ah, screw this.” He scans the shops lined up like soldiers along the sidewalk and spots the signage of a cafe. When his walks don’t turn up anything, Chanyeol almost always finds himself knocking back espresso with his feet on the table and a magazine on his lap. It’s a pick-me-up, a time when he forgets how objects drip shadows all over people.

The cafe is almost bare of faces and bodies running on caffeine. Chanyeol orders three cups of espresso to duel with the headache that’s taken up a significant portion of his brain. He finds a corner table pressed up against the tinted glass walls of the place, the chair behind it sagging with the weight of a thousand souls come and gone. He closes his eyes and tries to forget the phantom burden of a camera hanging from his neck. There is the clinking of cups being laid down on the table; he’s reminded of a shutter, the way it drops, that millisecond of space and breath when light comes rushing in and then the click, the falling of the curtain to bury the photo in darkness. He open his eyes. Sitting right in front of him are enamel mugs with designs painted on them, steam drawing lazy curls over the surface of the espresso. He picks one up, takes a sip, and lets the taste take over the senses that have not yet frayed.

The image of Soojung nestled in yards of muslin stains the wooden grain of the coffee table. Chanyeol scowls. He doesn’t want his frustration here, forming mounds in the humidity and reaching up to suffocate him. It’s not going to be a permanent thing. Maybe he just needs a couple of days, the short fizzle of a soda pop break while cycling around the city at dusk; maybe his muse needs a bit of rest. He tries to convince himself it’s alright.

He wonders if he’s climbed over mountains and reached the peak way before the scheduled time.

The second cup of coffee’s dry in his hand when a customer walks in. Chanyeol studies the way light pools on her cheek and in the hollow of her throat, sunlight spun into her hair as she recites her order to the barista. She takes a seat three tables away and sits on the side facing him. He frames her in a vignette, in the silence of monochrome, and watches her story drift away. It doesn’t settle. In the developer chemicals that he sets up in the roof of his mind, he watches her aura, the edges of her beauty, and the way her lips tremble melt in the stop bath.

He sets down his cup, hard enough to register a clatter that causes the barista’s head to turn his way. Chanyeol ignores him, ignores the girl. He examines the veins in his hands and the way they branch out, diving deeper and deeper, tracing his life and dreams on onion-thin skin.

He can’t have forgotten what it is to capture things, to get his hands around them mid-flight for a moment, a blink, before they continue shooting past him to the receding horizon. The fear burns through him and leaves him a smoking pile of doubt.

Chanyeol gulps down the contents of the third cup, trying to calm himself down. It doesn’t work. All the caffeine does is turn his heart into a skittering rabbit. He can’t stay here -- the walls are pressing closer and closer, the jazz music is morphing into a funeral dirge, and the girl sitting at the nearby table is a book with blank pages. He stands up, his chair almost tipping over at how fast he does it, and he tries to walk in steady steps.

By the time Chanyeol gets to his apartment, the key in his hand feels slippery and cold. He unlocks the door, closes it behind him, and lets himself fall into a heap. The thudding in his chest rains down on his fingers. It takes him a while to realize that he’s shaking.

Everything in this place is off-kilter. He looks around at the frames hanging on the wall, the faces that have sewn themselves into his life and written his name on every corner of the artistic community. In his mind he sees his accolades, the critiques, the praises, the conferences where he’s delivered tips and speeches about condensing the ordinary into frozen moments.

The camera sits on the table where he’d left it, black and bulky, its lens covered. Chanyeol walks toward it and picks it up. It feels heavy in his hand, like it’s got enough weight to drag him down, down, down. He raises it to his left eye and sees only darkness.

What in the world, he wonders, is he going to say to the gallery and to the rest of the world?

 

 

 

 

“You’re overthinking things,” Jongdae declares when they meet in the boiled broth heat of a noodle shop tucked into a city corner and gathering dust. He slurps up his noodles with as much grace as an elephant in an isolation room. “You’re probably stressed, that’s all. Taking so many pictures of people walking on the street can seem mind-numbing after a while.”

“But I couldn’t even take a picture of Soojung --”

“Since when have you ever done well with studio photography?” Jongdae interrupts. “Your photos hold grit, Chanyeol, not varnish and glamor and the dazzling glare of manufactured lighting. You don’t _plan_ who you’ll take pictures of, you just come across them when they’re walking out of Taco Bell with sauce staining their shirt collar.”

Chanyeol frowns, scooping up soup with more aggression than necessary. “I can do studio photography,” he says, sulking.

“Nope, you can’t,” Jongdae says. Chanyeol flicks a noodle over at him, but Jongdae just brushes it off. “Sorry, but that’s the truth. Your photos are better when you take them off the road, on the fly, with no preparations whatsoever.”

“Fine. Okay. But none of the photographs I’ve been taking from the street are any good.” Chanyeol dips the meat in hoisin sauce, trying to fix the architecture of his thoughts.

“They’re not bad,” Jongdae says.

“Not bad, yes,” Chanyeol says. “A check mark for every element. But they’re not _good_ \-- at least, they’re nothing other than technically appealing.”

“Maybe you just need a better subject,” Jongdae ventures. “I don’t know, maybe you need to hole yourself up in a room, so that when you go outside, things don’t seem so similar anymore.”

“I can’t do that, Jongdae. I can’t hole up. The gallery needs the photos in a month and a half. If this continues, maybe I can pick a few decent photos to exhibit, but there won’t be anything good enough to be the main piece.”

“I’m not telling you to not take pictures for a long time,” Jongdae says. “I’m telling you to give it a day, maybe two. Just breathe. Relax. Don’t think so much about taking pictures of people.”

“That’s what Soojung said as well,” Chanyeol mutters.

“Well, why don’t you listen to her?” Jongdae taps his chopsticks on the rim of his bowl. “It’s not like it’s that difficult to put down your camera for a few days. Do something else. Play your guitar or whatever.”

Chanyeol spears a piece of meat. “I’ll think about it.”

 

 

 

 

He thinks about it for a grand total of five minutes, when he’s home and cocooned in his blankets. The answer that comes back is a resounding _no_. Chanyeol nods to himself. How silly of his friends to think it’s that easy for him to take a break, to set aside the gear that’s an extension of his body. He rolls over and goes to sleep.

The next day he’s back out on the street, sweating as he scours the crowd for someone memorable, someone with impact and expression and that intangible aura that pushes through pixels. He snaps ten, twenty, flagging down the people who don’t seem to be in so much hurry to turn him down. They smile, they cock their heads, they look away as the wind tosses their hair. At noon, Chanyeol slips inside a restaurant and goes over his photographs.

It’s not that they’re awful. It’s that they’re missing something, something so important, that the picture is left to lie flat in one’s consciousness. The picture is wavering, empty of any real meaning, and Chanyeol buries his face in his hands in frustration.

He’s done this for a long, long time. Fresh out of secondary with his first DSLR as his graduation gift, gigabytes of memory taken up by the ceremony where he’d taken pictures of everyone going up the stage. He’d pursued a career in it, dumped the Politics degree he’d applied for, and gone around uni to scout for the best backdrops.

Street photography didn’t tug at him until much, much later, when he was 21 and walking home after a shoot where he’d taken shot after shot of models doused in glitter and oil. It was seven in the morning and the sky was blue in the face. Chanyeol had been looking for a cab but abandoned the endeavor maybe thirty minutes into the waiting game. He fiddled with his camera as he walked.

When he looked up, there was a guy dressed in a suit, sitting cross-legged on the pavement and drinking beer. Chanyeol had not let his thoughts catch up to him. He raised the camera, pressed the shutter, and before the audible _click_ made its way to the guy’s ears, the picture was shivering on the playback screen.

The guy had not even reacted. Chanyeol waited for him to curse, to run after him, to demand him to delete the photo. Instead, he’d simply turned to Chanyeol and offered him a bottle. “Do you want a drink?”

“It’s seven in the morning.”

“Who cares if it’s seven in the morning?” the guy said. “Seven in the morning, seven in the evening -- it’s still seven, and you might as well drink seven bottles of beer.”

Chanyeol sat down beside the guy. “Don’t you have a job later? I don’t think your boss will like the fact that you’re clocking in drunk.”

“Nope,” the guy said. “The suit’s for a date that’s gone to ruins, so I think beer’s in order.”

“Oh.” Chanyeol looked down at his hands, not quite knowing what to say. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. The guy was an asshole. I’m just mad that I agreed to do it when I could have just stayed at home, playing video games and watching TV and falling asleep in my boxers.” He stopped for a beat. “Does that bother you?”

“It doesn’t.”

The guy flashed him a glance, as if weighing him and the truth of his words. “I’m Jongdae.”

“I’m Chanyeol.”

Chanyeol had ended up not drinking any of the beer that Jongdae had offered him, but it didn’t matter much. He and Jongdae ended up walking home together after throwing the bottles to a nearby trash can, Jongdae so inebriated that he could not walk in a straight line, and by the time Chanyeol had dropped him off at his apartment they’d become friends. Three months later, he submitted Jongdae’s portrait as his final project. It got him more than an A -- it got him initial recognition and a spot in the school gallery.

Then, Chanyeol had realized that he wanted nothing more than to be on the street, taking pictures of the people who floated by in one mass, seeming so similar to each other that there was no point in presenting frames of uniformity. But more than once he’d spotted someone in the crowd, and Chanyeol had stepped closer and pressed the shutter, and added the photo to a growing collection of portraits.

He turns his camera on again and flips through the playback. All perfectly composed photos with the right settings, the light hitting the subjects in creative angles.

So what is wrong?

 

 

 

 

On Friday, Chanyeol is whisked away from his apartment by a leather-clad Jongdae. The day is hot, the sun beating on the windows of Jongdae’s silver Audi, and Chanyeol tries not to be so much of an awkward fit in a space not designed for someone of his height. He swears Jongdae’s trying to get back at him for all those days Chanyeol had rested his elbow on the shorter guy’s head.

“Are you taking me hostage in broad daylight?” Chanyeol asks, deciding that if he keeps still he’s less likely to bump into things.

“I am not at liberty to speak of the Boss’ orders,” Jongdae recites in a flat tone. Then he steps on the gas and overtakes a red Honda, and Chanyeol’s head hits the ceiling.

“Do you even know what liberty means?”

“Do you want to be gagged?” Jongdae fires back. Chanyeol contemplates answering yes, but he doesn’t know how far Jongdae’s going to keep playing this game.

They edge into the seedier parts of the city, the areas where night life’s in full bloom past midnight and dead to the world when the rooster crows along with the whining of police car sirens. Chanyeol watches, confused, as Jongdae parks right in front of the bar they frequented on Saturday nights, not Friday mornings. Jongdae hauls him out of the car and into the bar, depositing him on a stool at the counter. Before Chanyeol can blink, there is a cocktail glowing phosphorescent in front of him, and the bartender is watching him with heavily-lidded eyes.

“Jongdae,” Chanyeol manages to say, “Jongdae it’s fucking nine in the fucking morning. Why are we here?”

“To drink, of course,” Jongdae says with a shrug. “You need to fall into the pit of intoxication, let the alcohol steal away your worries, until you float off into the realm of the unknown and rediscover your muse.”

Chanyeol squints. “Why does it sound like you’ve memorized this speech?”

“I’m sorry, you must be mistaken --” Jongdae stops. He takes a deep breath. Then he swipes the cocktail right under Chanyeol’s nose and gulps it down, chest heaving. “I didn’t plan this, okay, it was Soojung’s idea and she’s holding something over me, so _drink_ , Yeol.”

“It’s _nine_ ,” Chanyeol says. “It’s _nine_ , Jongdae.”

“Then go drink nine cocktails, I don’t know,” Jongdae says. “Just drink. They say artists work better drunk.”

“I’m calling Soojung.”

“Go ahead.” Jongdae snaps his fingers and signals to the bartender for a bottle of beer. “If she picks up, tell her I got you here and you’re drinking, alright?”

“But I’m not drinking,” Chanyeol whispers, already hitting _dial_ beside Soojung’s number.

Static crackles on the other end for a good fifteen seconds before Soojung picks up. When she does, Chanyeol hears shouts in the background and the unmistakable drone of a blow dryer. “Yes, Dobi?”

“Soojung,” Chanyeol says, “what are you planning?”

“I take it that you’re not yet drunk,” Soojung says. “Well, it was probably too much to hope that you’d follow whatever Jongdae told you to do.”

“Listen, Soojung, okay, listen,” Chanyeol says. “It is nine in the morning. I have no intentions of drinking at nine in the morning, and I have no idea why you think it’s going to help me. Okay?”

“You think too much,” Soojung replies. “Maybe it would do you some good if you didn’t really have to think about your photographs.”

“That’s honestly not something I can do,” Chanyeol says. He watches as Jongdae begins to strike up a conversation with the bartender, the liquid in his glass changing color every time he drains it. “I know you’re trying to help but, Soojung, I don’t think there’s anything that can be done.”

He hears her sigh and imagines her surrounded by make-up artists and stylists, teasing her hair and accentuating her features. Masking her exhaustion with smudges of concealer and dots of berry-red lipstick, propping her up in front of the glare of spotlights and draining out a smile from her with every click.

“Well, I tried,” she says. “If you do want a drink, though, don’t worry. It’s on me.”

“Jongdae’s guzzling the alcohol straight out of the bottle,” Chanyeol says, the corner of his lips lifting up in a smile when she swears. “I’ll leave you to it. Bye, Soojung.”

“That idiot. Bye, Chanyeol, and look where you’re going.”

Chanyeol doesn’t bother to tell Jongdae he’s leaving, because by the time he hangs up, his friend is somehow all over the bartender. He pushes Soojung’s business card onto the counter, and because he feels bad, he adds his as well. The door clicks shut behind him when he walks out.

Outside, his pants and his shirt cling to his skin, sticky with sweat and humidity. He’s glad he still remembers the route back to the main areas of the city, information he’s gleaned from all those alcohol-washed nights he and Jongdae had driven here on a prayer of a bus, which plied the downtown streets before six. Somehow they managed to never run into a cop in blue uniform, which would be sure to slash off all the years of good press he and Jongdae have had in their respective fields. Chanyeol’s works would be scrutinized the world over for vestiges of cocaine madness and the taint of addiction. Meanwhile, Jongdae’s songs would be pared down to a liquid mess streaming out of radio stations and mainstream frequencies. Together they created vomit trails back to the city.

Chanyeol had fallen in love with the streets because he’d fallen in love with the Jongdae he’d met years ago, his body a crumbling tower on the sidewalk, fenced in by the brown glass cones of beer. He couldn’t tell Jongdae that he found him beautiful that way, caught in the concave lens of a dawn-streaked landscape. On the way home, he couldn’t tell him that he wanted to hold him close forever, that at the doorstep he wanted something more than a _see you soon_.

Love, Chanyeol knew, was not something he could put in his pocket and take out on rainy days. So he went out on the streets every day and splattered his love all over, left spots of red and blue and black and white; he bled his emotions in the dark room, wiped them over the surfaces of his pictures. It was the only way.

Somehow, he thinks, he’s become jaded. He doesn’t love Jongdae anymore -- he can look at him once, twice, without wanting to make him his masterpiece. But he’s starting to realize that his muse hadn’t gone away. No, he’d been the one to chase it out, sweep it in the dustpan, and throw it into the dumpster. It was a coagulated pile of things that he knew he would never be able to hold on to. The way he knew that day, sitting beside Jongdae on the pavement, that some things could be so close yet so distant.

He turns a corner and finds himself staring at the great, yawning mouth of the city filled with smoke and vehicles and a blob of noise rising to take over the atmosphere. Rivers of people flow right into each other, and Chanyeol takes a deep breath before diving straight in.

It’s somewhere past the city park that he sees _him_ standing still with confusion on his shoulders.

He’s tiny in this crowd, with heat-flushed cheeks and fists balled up at his sides. There’s something angular about his frame, softness dripping over it in a way that Chanyeol doesn’t quite understand, and it seems like he’s looking for something. There’s nothing special about him, not his brown hair or his build or the air around him, and yet -- yet Chanyeol’s rooted in place, watching him as he peels away from the crowd to ask a policeman something, shoulders drooping forward through the fabric of his shirt. Chanyeol makes his way to a spot discreet enough to continue spying on the guy.

Then the guy turns, and for a brief second, their gazes lock.

Later, when Chanyeol’s made it to the gallery after watching the guy swim back into the crowd, still frozen and unable to chase after him, he tries to organize his thoughts. He tries to make sense of what he’d seen, sewn into every line and curve of the guy’s face. In the cool blast of the air conditioner and the classical music underlining every step he takes, he remembers the quiver in the guy’s brow, the worry staining his lips, the anxiety a backlit glare on his cheeks, and the prose in his eyes. He remembers a thing, a feeling, zipping across the distance and laying its palm on his chest, telling him that what he’s looking for is right there.

Right there, in the gleam of day and the howls of weary souls -- right there, in the midst of books with blank pages and pens without ink -- right there, goddamit, just right there, in a blue polo and jeans and sneakers, his hair the slightest bit askew, with a story in his eyes and his arms and his legs, in the very fact of his existence.

And his camera hadn’t been in his hands. And he had been a coward, kept in place by a fear he hadn’t met for the longest time.

Chanyeol stares at a painting and hopes the guy will still be lost tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

“I found my muse,” Chanyeol says three days later, over dainty china cups of tea that he gulps down so as not to offend Soojung. They’re sitting on top of thick carpets found everywhere in Soojung’s chair-free studio. Chanyeol has given up on getting her to buy a couch.

Soojung blinks at him, her features devoid of any expression. “When do I get to meet this person?”

“I haven’t met him yet, myself,” Chanyeol says. “Found him the Friday that you asked Jongdae to try to get me drunk. I wasn’t able to come closer and ask him to be my subject because he was gone before I could blink.” He lets the green tea wash his mouth of guilt for not telling Soojung the whole truth.

She sets down her teacup. “I thought Jongdae was the idiot,” she says, tone still calm. “Is it infectious now? Should I refrain from talking to you?”

Chanyeol frowns. “We were going opposite directions, how could I have stopped him?”

“You could have,” she says. “You _really_ do underestimate how much I know you, don’t you? For future reference, your right hand twitches when you’re lying.”

Chanyeol’s immediate response is to look down at his right hand. When he looks back up, Soojung rolls her eyes at him.

“How are you supposed to ask him to model for you now?” she asks. “You of all people should know that once a moment’s gone, it’s gone.”

“I know, I know,” Chanyeol says. He watches the leaves swirl at the bottom of his cup -- lets them form a shape, a face that he’s captured in his mind but not on film. He wishes he’d done something, then. Wishes he’d reached out, taken the extra steps and cut off the distance between them; wishes he’d brought his camera, that he’d seen the guy earlier, that he had not choked on his words upon seeing the story swirling beneath the lost look on the guy’s face.

“Well,” Soojung says with a sigh, “you’ll have to pray for some sort of miracle to happen. You might never see him again.”

The tea, Chanyeol decides, is bitter down to the last dregs.

 

 

 

The thing is, Soojung is right. Chanyeol knows how fleeting a moment is, how fragile and how delicate it can be, like a moth with paper-thin wings drifting too close to an open flame. He knows it, and it’s the reason why he’s almost always got his camera with him, ready to let that moment last as long as he can. Even then it falls short of capturing every single detail.

So he continues to walk through the streets, fingers reaching for the shutter again and again and again. He may not find many of them satisfying enough, but on a technical standpoint they’re fit enough to exhibit. On weekends he spends hours with chemicals pooling in his palms, dripping through the cracks between his fingers in a bid to encase time; to let it linger on canvas, in print, on paper glossy with want.

Sometimes he thinks of the guy, frames him in a sea of people with eyes fixed on their feet and forever moving forward. He sees him turn around, sees him with the wind contouring his form, sees him take the few steps to the policeman with confusion casting his eyes in shadow. He thinks of that second they’d shared, that inhale-exhale they’d both taken with gazes intertwined. Chanyeol regrets. He regrets, but that moment has slipped out of his hands.

One Wednesday afternoon, he finds himself at the point separating downtown and the rest of the city. For a while he stands there, gazing at the highways that spin off into distance and unfamiliar places, his camera hanging off of his neck as always.

A movement to his left catches his eye. The door to a music store is opening, regurgitating a figure in an ocean of a sweater and faded jeans. Chanyeol doesn’t know why, but he stares at the person and how he bends over to tie his shoelaces. He watches as the guy looks right and left, still not noticing him despite the heaviness of his stare, and begins to walk in the direction of the nearby bus stop. There, he sits on an iron bench painted neon orange, hands clutching the edges of the bench. The sight makes Chanyeol smile.

He doesn’t dwell too much on it, on his decision to come closer and ask the person if he can take a picture of him. It’s simply that the scene is so pure, so light and void of darkness, and he wants to record it before it floats off on a whisper of a breeze.

When he’s maybe just a few steps away, with his voice ready to rise out of his throat, Chanyeol stills.

It’s him -- it’s the same guy he’d seen, several Fridays ago. He’s sitting right there, not looking at Chanyeol at all, but just his profile is enough to confirm Chanyeol’s suspicions. The story hasn’t faded in the time since he’d last seen him. It’s still there, scrawled all over his too-long sleeves and the dragging hems of his jeans, climbing along the slope of his jaw and clinging to his eyelashes. Chanyeol wants to take a picture of him right then and there, but he manages to recover just enough of his senses to clear his throat.

The guy looks around for the source of the sound before turning his way, eyes wide. Chanyeol resists the urge to attach a macro lens to his camera and take a picture of those eyes. Instead he says, with all the civility and restraint that he’s surprised he has, “May I take a picture of you?”

“M-me?” the guy asks, uncertainty crossing his features.

“Yes, you,” Chanyeol says. He clenches his fists to keep himself from taking the picture, model release form be damned. “It’s for an exhibit I’m having.”

The guy seems to shrink in on himself. Chanyeol is reminded of a house at the end of the lane, all the doors and windows closing one by one. The story is there but the ink is smeared across the pages, impossible to decipher, difficult to grasp. His heart sinks -- it is a pebble in a river, tossed down the bed and turning over, under, over, under.

“I’m sorry,” the guy says, his voice so soft it’s as if he’s afraid to be heard, “but I don’t feel comfortable with that.”

“It’s alright,” Chanyeol says, trying to convey that it _is_ alright, he’s allowed to refuse, even if the disappointment’s coloring his chest with a black crayon. “Um, but, just in case you change your mind,” he fishes out a business card from his bag and puts it beside the guy, “you can contact me. My name’s Chanyeol, by the way.”

The guy picks up the card, fingers on the edges, and he glances at the contact information before looking up at Chanyeol. “Alright,” he says. “I’m Baekhyun.” Then, after a second’s hesitation, he smiles. The light seems to awaken in the depths of his irises, pouring down his veins and over his skin, and he looks so bright and aglow that Chanyeol has to swallow down a _Are you sure you don’t want to be photographed?_

He can’t stop the grin that’s prying his lips upward, either. “Nice to meet you, Baekhyun.”

The bus arrives, and Baekhyun inclines his head in Chanyeol’s direction, standing up and dusting off his jeans. “I have to go,” he says, smile tempered to something that’s still gentle but now turned down low. It’s a light bulb flickering in an empty room.

“Okay,” Chanyeol says. “I hope you’ll consider being photographed.”

Baekhyun’s nod is tiny, but hope still scrambles up Chanyeol’s rib cage. “I’ll consider it.”

With that he’s gone, the bus speeding down a route that Chanyeol’s never taken. He watches it, fingers clutching the strap of his camera, and he tries not to linger too much on the fluorescence of Baekhyun’s smile.

 

 

 

 

“So you talked to him,” Jongdae says, mouth stuffed full with meat, “and he refused?”

“Yes,” Chanyeol says. In the cloying fragrance of bodies rubbing against each other and alcohol dancing in shot glasses, his head is pounding. The music beats against the walls and stomps all over the counter. He’s only here because of Jongdae, and Jongdae’s here because of the bartender named Zitao who is most likely his boyfriend. They’ve been cooing at each other when Zitao’s free to wander over to their corner. Chanyeol wants to hurl and see what they’ll do with the bile.

“But you gave him your business card?” Jongdae asks for what must be the third time.

“Yes,” Chanyeol hisses. “Look, Jongdae, if you’re going to say I’m stupid for hoping, then --”

“I’m not saying it’s stupid,” Jongdae says, taking a swig of his beer. “I’m just surprised you gave him your business card. Usually when someone turns you down, you just move on and find a new subject.”

Brown eyes and a light-bulb smile occupies Chanyeol’s thoughts, and his tongue feels rough when he says, “Yeah, but I can’t seem to let go of him.”

Jongdae narrows his eyes. “Go on.”

“There’s something about him, Jongdae,” he says, running his fingers through his hair. Again and again, he sees before him the image of Baekhyun sitting on the bus stop bench, nestled in the brightness of orange paint. “And I don’t know why I feel this way, but I _need_ to have his portrait in my exhibit. I’m actually pretty close to making him the only subject of the exhibit.”

“He hasn’t agreed, Chanyeol,” Jongdae says, and he sounds almost sad. There is a frown curled over his lips.

“I know.” The words come out in a sigh, an exhale that Chanyeol doesn’t know he’s been holding in; they come out in clouds that drift and evaporate in smoke trails of emotions. “But I can still hope, can’t I?”

Jongdae watches him over the rim of his bottle, with a look that’s hard to pick apart. “Yeah, you can.”

Chanyeol decides to order another beer.

 

 

  



	2. Chapter 2

 

 

 

It is five in the morning when the ringing of his phone breaks through the waters of Chanyeol’s consciousness. It’s insistent and loud enough for him to fling aside the bed sheets and reach for it, cramming his yawn back in his throat to say, “Hello?”

“Hi,” the person on the other end says, and with that one word Chanyeol is falling out of bed and pacing back and forth. He tries to calm himself, to not hope so much because stars fall out of skies sometimes, and they crumble to stardust. “Hi, this is Baekhyun.”

“Hello, Baekhyun,” Chanyeol says, trying to keep the excitement out of his tone. “Why are you calling me?”

“I…” Something rustles. He hears the padding of bare feet on tiles, and then Baekhyun’s breath, shaky through the line. “I thought about your offer, and I...I think it’s alright for you to take my pictures for your exhibit.”

“Are you sure?” Chanyeol asks, even though his inner self is doing cartwheels. “I don’t want you to feel like you’re being forced or anything.”

“No, I --” It seems like Baekhyun’s stopped pacing. “I’m sure. Yes, I’m sure. I’ll be at the same bus stop around three in the afternoon.”

“Alright,” Chanyeol says. “Alright, thank you for doing this, Baekhyun.”

“No problem,” Baekhyun says. He laughs, and it’s a sound without weight, cotton-soft and unrestrained. “See you later, Chanyeol.”

“See you.”

Once the call has ended, Chanyeol doesn’t sleep. Instead he goes over his gear, picking the lenses he wants to use and placing them along with the camera body in his bag. He’s awake enough to cook a breakfast of vegetables and sausages tossed in sauce, and in the shower he dances amidst soap bubbles.

Ten minutes before three, Chanyeol finds himself lurking inside the store that’s facing the bus stop. He wanders up and down the aisles while keeping an eye out for a small guy picking his way through to the orange bench. At 3:01 pm, he sees Baekhyun’s figure step out of the music store and walk toward the bus stop.

Through the store windows, Chanyeol watches as Baekhyun settles on the bench, his movements graceful and without much flair. He’s leaning over his knees, looking right and left and all around. Chanyeol wants to capture this unguarded moment, this artlessness and sincerity seeping out of the frame. He wants to, but Baekhyun’s waiting, and it’s going against Baekhyun’s trust to photograph him when he’s unaware.

When Baekhyun spots him, his shoulders relax and he stops attempting to rub a hole through the fabric of his jeans. He’s dressed casual today in a white shirt and a blue varsity jacket. “Hi,” he says, with a smile bright enough to be a spotlight.

“Hello,” Chanyeol says. “Thank you again for agreeing to do this.”

Baekhyun laughs and it’s feather-light, floating instead of rushing away. “No problem,” he says. “So um…” He eyes the bag hanging from Chanyeol’s shoulder and bites his lip. “What do I do?”

“Act natural,” Chanyeol says, grinning. “Act the way you would if you didn’t know I was right there with my camera.”

“Okay,” Baekhyun says. “I’ll try my best.”

“Don’t worry,” Chanyeol says. “For the first picture, is it alright if we go to the main street? I want to take a photo of you in the middle of a huge crowd.”

“Alright. Lead the way.”

Baekhyun, Chanyeol realizes, is a dream of a subject. He settles right into the fabric of his skin and doesn’t contort his body in exaggerated poses. Chanyeol tries not to cry when Baekhyun stands right in the thick of the going-home crowd, confusion fitting the angles of his face. 

Chanyeol doesn’t even bother to flip through playback. He and Baekhyun develop a kind of rhythm, and he takes shots of the latter from various angles and with various backgrounds. There is Baekhyun and a close-up shot of his face, his story so clear on the surface of his eyes. There is Baekhyun and the bend of his wrist, fingers tripping across the grass. There is Baekhyun all curled up on a park bench, staring somewhere far away; Baekhyun, and the side of his face awash with light bordering on golden; Baekhyun, and the very fact of his vulnerability sewn into every line of his body as he sits on the marble steps leading up to the library.

“So,” Chanyeol says when they find themselves in a dead-end alley, graffiti sprayed across aging red brick and rusting fire escapes. He and Baekhyun have been silent so far, not a single word finding its way to the air between them, save for a few _Let’s move_ s and _Are you okay_ s. “What’s your favorite color?”

Baekhyun reaches up to trace the bloated dragon’s head blazing on the right-hand wall. “My favorite color?” He cocks his head, and Chanyeol doesn’t think -- he just snaps the photo. “I’m not sure.”

“You’re not sure?” Chanyeol raises an eyebrow. “Everyone has a favorite color.”

“I’m not part of that everyone, then,” Baekhyun says, and he turns to face Chanyeol, his eyes twinkling with some hidden secret. “What about you?”

“Brown,” Chanyeol blurts out, not even sure why that’s what comes out until he realizes it’s the color of Baekhyun’s eyes. He ducks his head, trying to keep the blush from sweeping over his cheeks. It’s ridiculous, almost laughable, how his heart flutters when Baekhyun sends him a glance during the entire shoot. It’s not as if Chanyeol is here for anything more than the lovely tapestry of sinew and bone that takes up his viewfinder when his lens is trained on Baekhyun. “I, yeah, brown.”

“Why brown?” Baekhyun asks, pulling himself up to sit on the lowest step of the fire escape. He winds his arm through the railing, legs dangling in blank space as the air creates ripples through his hair. “Come up here, Chanyeol, the view is wonderful.”

“Yeah,” Chanyeol says, almost unable to blink as he raises his camera to eye-level. He composes the shot, the entirety of the grid taken up by Baekhyun’s face lifted up to the sky, sunset pooling in his collarbones. “I’m sure it is.”

When he puts down his camera, Baekhyun is looking down at him, and a strip of a smile has taken residence on his lips. Chanyeol, for a horrible second, forgets what it’s like to breathe -- what it’s like for the blood to circulate throughout his system, for the oxygen to run a race from one end of his body to the next. This picture, with pink and orange and purple tinting the clouds, is one that he files away to the album in his mind.

It’s two hours after that Chanyeol ends the session, feeling as though no matter what he does, he cannot capture everything that Baekhyun is and every nuance of his story. 

“I hope I helped,” Baekhyun says, the words tentative as he gathers his jacket closer, wrapping himself in the embrace of cloth.

“You did,” Chanyeol reassures him. “Thank you, I can’t thank you enough. I’ll develop these photos and let you see them, if you want.”

A flicker of something passes through Baekhyun’s face. “It’s okay,” he says, “I trust your judgment.”

“Are you sure?” Chanyeol asks.

“Yeah. I don’t know much about photography, anyway.”

“If you say so,” Chanyeol says. He zips up his bag and slings it over his shoulder. The skies are growing dark, and he can see himself and the stars tiptoeing into Baekhyun’s irises. “We should talk to each other more next time.”

“We should.” Baekhyun nods. “Good night, Chanyeol.”

“Good night.”

And it’s night staining the skies with its shadows and its dreams, stretching over the slouching figures of people making their way home. But Baekhyun, it seems, stands apart. In the street lights he is streaked with beauty, distilled into paragraphs and paragraphs of eternity and firework eyes and quicksilver wishes. 

Chanyeol can’t lump him in with the other portraits. Baekhyun needs to be the center piece, the focal point. He is too complex to be explored in a single shot. Baekhyun is an entire exhibit, a magnum opus brimming with promises, and Chanyeol knows there cannot be anyone else’s portrait with his. The difference will be jarring. 

He places a call to the gallery.

 

 

The dark room in Chanyeol's apartment takes up a little over a quarter of the available space. He spends most of his nights here, awake and half-awake, the stars trailing in after him when he closes the door. Within patches of black he transfers images to something concrete, something he can let lie in his palm without it flitting away. This, Chanyeol thinks, is what he enjoys most after scouring daylight for a piece of memory. This is when he can cheat time for a bit, when his hands make colors more vivid and shapes more defined, when there are faces spilling all over his work tables. 

He sets to work on Baekhyun's photographs the moment he arrives home. He doesn't know how they'll turn out. He never does, because computer screens don't ever represent the true thing, the product of the developing process with Chanyeol in the dark room, pouring chemicals in the tub and waiting for the portrait to spread across the square. He works fast, unstoppering bottles and letting the contents bleed onto the trays. There is a beat in it, a harmony in the way everything works together to produce a picture.

He thinks of Baekhyun's smile as he waits for the prints to dry. He thinks of the way his lips intersect with his cheeks, how his laughter is a stream flowing right out of his mouth. He thinks of the beauty lying soft beneath Baekhyun's skin, like dew dripping from blades of grass in the morning, when the world is quiet and slumbering. The thought of him standing in the crowd, people pulsing all around him and cutting up the background into quarters, is so clear in Chanyeol's mind. It is the only thing he can see as he sits at the kitchen table, eating bread and drinking coffee. The walls are stained with the faces of people that Chanyeol's been drawn to through the years, but even here he feels Baekhyun has no place. He is far too much to enclose in 45 square meters, too bright and too striking on cream walls with white trim.

It's a minute to the end of the developing time. Chanyeol stands, leaves his plate and glass at the sink, and heads back to the dark room. He takes a deep breath. One by one, he gathers up the prints, wondering what he's going to see, how different they'll be from playback.

He walks out of the bedroom and sits, cross-legged, on the tiled floor of the balcony. The sky is ink and the city is aflame with lights, reaching all the way from one end of the city to the next. For a moment he stares at the horizon, crumbling into miles in his line of sight, and he remembers the way he'd felt the first time he'd developed his test prints in college. He'd been antsy back then, his heart a fluttering bird behind the wall of his chest. 

He feels the same way now, Baekhyun's photos a scattered deck on his lap. Square after square of every inch of him, high-definition, sun flares on the edges and dusk in full bloom in the spaces between. 

He starts going through them.

The first, Baekhyun's limbs draped over the sidewalk, hands hanging over his knees and face turned away. The second a study of Baekhyun's face cast three-quarters in shadow, eyelashes brushing his cheekbones, hair sprayed across his forehead. Third, Baekhyun balancing on a metal rail, arms spread out and slashing a line straight through the sky, a smile peaceful on his face. And more and more and more -- Baekhyun laughing, Baekhyun's eyes bursting with stars, Baekhyun and the graphite of his hair in fragments.

A feeling sinks to the pit of Chanyeol's stomach. It is cold and hot, wet and dry, compressing and expanding and spreading through the whole of himself. 

He closes his eyes. There, scrawled on the backs of his eyelids, is Baekhyun just a hand's breadth away. He's saying something and it's silent, it's without sound, it is drowning in water and the blood pounding in Chanyeol's ears and the everyday orchestra of traffic. He's saying something and Chanyeol is scared -- he is inadequate, not nearly enough to be measured up against Baekhyun.

He'd thought he'd let go of love after Jongdae. He'd believed there was nothing left to feel, that he left his emotions daily in the dust and hardscrabble life of alleys and sidewalks.

Baekhyun, it seems, wants to prove him wrong.

 

 

Their sessions become a habit. It’s one that Chanyeol doesn’t mind having, something he’d like to develop and extend for years and years, if that’s possible. He meets Baekhyun at three in the afternoon, sometimes at six in the morning, a few times at ten in the evening when the boulevards are scrubbed clean of any other person. 

He knows he’s on a free-fall, dropping straight from the mile-high to the down-low. A crash course pegged all over the sky, signal lights flashing red through the fog but he keeps going anyway. Even if he knows -- even if the world’s screaming warnings at him, he lets himself drift onward.

It’s on a scheduled night shoot that he finds Baekhyun a collapsed structure of string-tied limbs on a bench along the boulevard. There is exhaustion curled around his neck, trailing down his arms and his legs, and coming back up to the curvature of his torso. Chanyeol aches. 

“Hey,” he says, careful to put away his gear for a bit. “Looking for sunshine?”

A tenuous smile occupies the tired portions of Baekhyun’s features. “Hello to you, too.”

“You want to rest a while?” Chanyeol asks. He waves his hand in the direction of a round-the-clock shop just a couple of feet away, where he’s found himself on those blown-flower nights where the night doesn’t lie still on his bed and tugs him along the open-faced streets. 

“But your photos…”

“We’re not on a strict schedule,” Chanyeol says, laughing. He stands up and pulls on Baekhyun’s hand. After a beat, Baekhyun lets loose a chuckle and follows him to the shop. 

There, they order cups of steaming hot noodles and cans of cola. The two of them sit at a table outside with the air all cold, the atmosphere thick with the melodies that have found their way out of the cracks in the nightclubs’ doors. Chanyeol watches as Baekhyun rolls his shoulders back and slurps up his noodles. He knocks back his cola, his own cup of noodles warming the numbness of his palm, and he wishes they can have more moments like this.

“Why are you so tired?” he asks, once they’re done eating. Together, they deposit their trash in a nearby bin, before making their way down the sidewalk. At this hour, they are two bodies seeking some sort of home, some sort of meaning in the liquid transparency of loneliness. 

“Aren’t we always tired?” Baekhyun replies. He stops, and Chanyeol stops as well. They stare at each other as cars take the ragged, worn-out paths to wherever it is they’re headed. “Aren’t we always broken, falling apart every day, dying and losing and fading every single moment that we live?” He takes Chanyeol’s hand and presses it against his heart, and Chanyeol tries not to betray the skittering of his pulse. “Listen to this, Chanyeol. It’s slow, but it keeps moving. The same way we’re tired but we keep on living. That’s all there is, that’s why we’re here, and that’s why we’re the people that we are.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” Chanyeol says, wondering if moving his hand upward to cup Baekhyun’s face will be crossing a line. 

“No, I didn’t,” Baekhyun says. “Look, take a picture of what I’ll do next. This is the only thing I’ll ask of you, I promise.”

 _You can ask anything of me,_ is what Chanyeol doesn’t say. He nods. “Sure.”

And then Baekhyun is tugging him along to the middle of the street, vehicles still streaking by. He sits there, folds his knees and his torso right along the line dividing the highway, and Chanyeol’s afraid but he crouches. He lets this moment linger for another second -- Baekhyun, lying midway through the back-and-forth lanes, his eyes closed and hands laced over his chest as if in prayer, as if he’s offering himself up -- and he clicks the shutter.

Seconds later, they’re running back to the sidewalk, out of breath with the recklessness of it, the adrenaline rush that comes with feeling life thundering through their bodies. Baekhyun grasps Chanyeol’s arm and they stay bent over, holding on to a lamppost; then Baekhyun tugs on Chanyeol’s sleeve and he looks up while Chanyeol looks down, happiness stamped on every inch of his skin. “Thank you,” he says, his voice still shaky with the way they’d run. 

“You’re welcome,” Chanyeol says. “Come on.”

And it’s easy after that. It’s so easy, documenting all of Baekhyun’s whims and the gossamer-like spools of his dreams unraveling in every image. He wants to laugh at the thought of it. The feeling bubbles up in his chest again, it rolls around in his stomach, it flips and kicks and sways with every shot of Baekhyun that Chanyeol takes. Because this is what it is -- this is Chanyeol getting drunk, getting high, getting addicted to the honesty of Baekhyun’s soul. Here he is, with the smoke of Baekhyun’s laughter trickling into his rib cage. Here, where the moon is a yellow spot on yards of navy, he tries not to let himself fall further. It doesn’t matter; the ground tips over anyway, taking Chanyeol with it.

This, Chanyeol realizes, is Baekhyun’s story. This is life wanting to tear apart the seams of Baekhyun’s flesh, and this is love splattered onto every scene. Life, with its uphills and downhills, the crescendo of Baekhyun’s joy and the staccato keys of his sadness; and love, all over him without his knowing, blooming in the unseen corners and burning bright along the entire length of Baekhyun’s shadow.

Baekhyun reaches his hand out, and Chanyeol wants to take it -- wants to see if their fingers line up perfectly in a row -- but all he does is press the shutter.

 

 

"When did you start photography?" Baekhyun asks during one of the breaks that he and Chanyeol weather out at a nearby cafe, him with a cup of peppermint tea and Chanyeol with three mugs of espresso. Outside the rain is falling, droplets perching on the windows before coasting back down to the ground, painting the city in darker hues than usual. 

In the greying light of the storm, Baekhyun looks warm in his white sweater, fingers curled around his cup. Sparks lurk in the depths of his eyes. He watches as Chanyeol tries to reorganize his thoughts, fishing for an answer in the intensity of Baekhyun's stare. 

"High school," Chanyeol asks after a pause. He slips his fingers through the handle of a mug. "I was 17 then, and my best friend, Soojung, was just starting her modeling career. I don't know, I got interested in photography because she made me her bodyguard when she went to photo shoots, and I was fascinated by the cameras."

Baekhyun inclines his head. "Soojung? As in the Soojung who's on the billboards all around the city?"

"Yes," Chanyeol says, allowing a smile to flicker on his lips. "That Soojung."

Baekhyun's mouth forms a tiny _o_ in awe. "Wow."

"What about you?" Chanyeol asks, and he wonders if maybe he's crossing a line. If maybe he's barging into walls and doors rising around Baekhyun, tearing them down even if Baekhyun doesn't want to. In all the days they've intersected, him the photographer and Baekhyun the subject, their conversations are skewed toward his life, not Baekhyun's. Still there are moments when Baekhyun doesn't seem so guarded, when he places a hand on Chanyeol's shoulder and says his name like it isn't an iron weight, a burden with all its syllables and the hidden want residing between vowels whenever Chanyeol hears him say it. Sometimes he lets himself hope, when Baekhyun's smile is licking clean across his face at something that Chanyeol's said. He lets himself dream, and it doesn't help that over time, Baekhyun takes off his armor piece by wretched piece. 

It's a week to the exhibit. This is their last day, the last time Chanyeol will have to work with him. At night he takes out his phone and stares at Baekhyun's number, contemplating calling him. What will Baekhyun say when Chanyeol splashes his love over midnight frequencies and twilight radio waves? He doesn't know. He doesn't know what will happen after this, what will come when Baekhyun is on a meandering waltz away to live his own life, and Chanyeol's on a reluctant foxtrot back to his works and his career.

"Tell him," Soojung had said, from thousands of miles away in Paris with fairy lights crowning her hair -- as if it were that simple, stapling a happy ending to a story that had no beginning. As if Chanyeol hadn't, for the past few years, collected bricks and cement and built castles on air. He'd drawn chalk circles of emotions on asphalt, let the pastels twist and turn to cover up the vessels of his heart, exposed and fading in the sun's rays.

Baekhyun hesitates. He takes a sip of his tea as his shoulders fall, then he puts it down and says, "Music." His voice is a layer of blue, suspended in the jazz tunes dancing in the corners of the cafe. "I work at the music store downtown. But I'm working on some songs because what I really want is to sing."

"Are you new to this city?" Chanyeol ventures. One step, one foot forward. "I..." He balls up his courage and tastes it, metallic on his tongue. "I saw you way before that day at the bus stop. Friday morning, rush hour. You stopped in the thick of the crowd and you looked so lost that I wanted to take a picture of you then, but I didn't have my camera with me." He braces himself for Baekhyun's reaction.

"Oh, " Baekhyun says, red creeping along his cheeks, "was it that obvious? Yes, I'm new to this city. Hailed a bus from my province and rode it to the end of the line."

"Why, though?"

Baekhyun shakes his head. "I couldn't stay there, not anymore, I..." Something -- a memory, a thought, a shard of the past -- has made his eyes a piecewise function of pain, of sadness. "The days all felt similar, Chanyeol. No changes. We slept, we ate, we slept and ate, and ate and slept. There, I had no chance of ever being a singer. But here..."

"I understand." 

"So yeah," Baekhyun says with a fragment of a smile, "that's how I ended up here."

"I'm glad you did," Chanyeol says, and he hopes nothing leaks out from his heart. "You saved me a lot of trouble."

Baekhyun raises his head to look up at him. For the briefest moment, his eyes are filled with the shadow of something Chanyeol cannot define. “I’m glad you found me, too,” he says, and it’s quiet. He takes another sip of his tea.

“After this, um…” Chanyeol fiddles with the sleeve of his shirt. “After this, I’m not going to bother you anymore. The, um, the exhibit will be at the city gallery if you want to see, and I’ll also be sending you the payment soon after.”

“Payment?” Baekhyun repeats. “You don’t need to pay me.”

“Yes, I do,” Chanyeol says, tilting his head. “The gallery is giving me a huge fee for this exhibit, and you deserve a portion of that because -- well, you’ll see.”

“You don’t have to,” Baekhyun says again. “I’m happy to help you, I --” He bites his lip and looks down at his hands, twisting and folding his fingers. “Look, just, I’m not going to accept any payment you give me.”

“Why not?” Chanyeol asks. He doesn’t like the frown that’s threading itself onto Baekhyun’s mouth, the trembling of his chin, the way he doesn’t quite hold Chanyeol’s gaze.

Baekhyun doesn’t answer.

“Okay,” Chanyeol says, desperate to change the topic, “okay, last few shots. Last few shots then you can go home.”

“I don’t want to go --” Baekhyun is looking at him with something that looks close to a plea, his knuckles white as he clutches the edge of the table. 

“Baekhyun?”

Baekhyun buries his face in his hands. His shoulders are gathered close to his body, and his chest rises and falls with every breath he takes. Chanyeol wants to make the table disappear. He wants to reach out, cradle Baekhyun in his arms, and make sure that the tire tracks of everything that has gone through his life will be erased. He wants to make sure that Baekhyun doesn’t frown, that Baekhyun doesn’t feel scared of anything -- because that’s it, there’s a certain kind of fear in the paleness of Baekhyun’s skin and the blue-green branches of his veins.

“Alright,” Baekhyun says after a while. He lets his hands fall down to his sides. “Let me just finish my tea.”

They resume taking photos, but Chanyeol has this urge to continue clicking the shutter. He wonders what will happen if he keeps pressing it, if he never stops taking pictures of Baekhyun, if the light does not fall out of love with the skies and they’re here forever. He wonders if, in that endless reality, he will be able to distill everything that Baekhyun is into photographs. He wonders if maybe, in that time, Baekhyun will start feeling the same way.

“Okay,” Chanyeol says, voice hoarse when he realizes that he can’t prolong this any longer, “that’s all. Thank you, Baekhyun.”

Baekhyun nods. Somehow, he seems withdrawn. He stands up and helps Chanyeol collect his gear, their bodies brushing, and Chanyeol’s heart aches. When Baekhyun hands him his bag and Chanyeol slips it over his shoulder, he tries to find something to say. Something substantial that Baekhyun will remember, even if they don’t run into each other again on the streets. Something that Chanyeol won’t regret when he is lying in bed at night, looking at Baekhyun’s number glowing in the dark. 

“So,” Chanyeol says. He wants to frame this bit of time. He wants to commemorate the beauty sticking to Baekhyun like cling-wrap, like stitches, like threads of a person who is far more than he appears. His hand shakes inside the comfort of his jeans pocket. It wants to reach up and hold Baekhyun’s cheek. He wants to kiss him, right under this pool of street lights, right under this star-drenched sky with the whole city streaming by, unaware of the existence of this beautiful boy. 

“So,” Baekhyun says. Chanyeol would like to believe that he is just as torn, but belief is no more but a wish, a promise that is never kept. 

“Good night,” Chanyeol says. He can’t quite smile but he tries, anyway. “Good luck.”

“You, too.” Baekhyun’s eyes seem sad.

Chanyeol begins to walk away, his chest a ball of flame wanting to burn right through his flesh, trying to hold back the ache that’s starting to spread through his veins and his arms and his limbs, crawling up to the corners of his eyes. _It’s alright_ , he tells himself. _You’ll get over it someday._

A hand clutches the back of his shirt and Chanyeol stops. He doesn’t turn. He can feel Baekhyun’s forehead pressed up against his shoulder blades, both of them not quite breathing. 

“I’ll see you around, right?” Baekhyun’s voice is smaller than a whisper. “And if I want to, I can just call you, right?”

“Right,” Chanyeol says. “You can.” He attempts a laugh but it gets stuck in his throat, comes out mangled and unclear. 

Baekhyun’s hold tightens for a second, and then he lets go of the fabric. “Okay. Good night.”

And Chanyeol does not want to walk away, but that’s what he does. That’s what he does, with the moon standing watch over him, his camera filled with Baekhyun’s photos and his heart filled with just Baekhyun; and when he finally looks back, down a street corner where there is no one to see his body disassemble into mere joints holding a bruised heart, he looks back. By then, Baekhyun is gone.

 

 

“So you’re letting him go just like that?” Soojung asks, dropping her hands from where they’d been patting down Chanyeol’s collar. She’s dressed simply today, hair down and minimal make-up on, but none of those things diminish the sharpness of her gaze. “Chanyeol --”

“Don’t,” Chanyeol says, clenching his fists. He pushes away the emptiness that’s been gathering in the nooks and crannies ever since his last session with Baekhyun. “Don’t, Soojung, just don’t. It’s the exhibit today, and I’m going to be surrounded by images of him all evening. Don’t make me feel worse.”

Soojung purses her lips. When she speaks, her tone comes out flat and harsh. “What, am I supposed to coddle you? Am I supposed to tell you -- yes, Chanyeol, it’s perfectly alright for you to shut up and suffer and hope the pain goes away sometime in the future? Am I supposed to do the same thing I did when you fell in love with Jongdae?” Her voice is rising, peaking, but her features remain blank. “Am I supposed to just watch as you bury yourself in streets and the happiness of other people? Is that what you want me to do, Chanyeol? _To step aside and let you break yourself with your own hands_?”

By now, they’re standing on the opposite sides of the room. Soojung’s arms are crossed over her chest and there is a certain ferocity in the set of her jaw. Chanyeol wants to turn his head, to shut out the truth blaring from all four walls, from his best friend’s mouth, from every flash and spark in his mind reminding him of Baekhyun.

“You don’t have to do anything, Soojung,” he says, his words like gravel in his mouth. “It’s done.” He tries not to think of the past few nights he’d been a pile of limbs in the balcony, going through his test prints with a hole on the left side of his chest. He remembers, still, the warmth of Baekhyun’s forehead leaning on his back, his hand balling up the fabric of Chanyeol’s shirt, the night so warm and syrupy between them.

“You never know,” Soojung says. Her voice hesitates near the shell of Chanyeol’s ear. “You’ve never really tried.”

Chanyeol doesn’t reply. Instead, he looks at his watch. It’s thirty after seven; the exhibit begins at eight. He picks up his jacket and throws it over his shoulders, even as Soojung continues to stand there, unmoving, her face frozen by an emotion he no longer wants to decipher.

“We’re running late,” he says, trying to busy himself with buttoning his cuffs. Gardenia blossoms all around him and he feels her hands taking over, slipping the button through the slit in the cloth.

“What are you going to do if he’ll be there?” she asks. She doesn’t look at him. She just continues to button, to smooth out the creases in his clothes the same way she’s done for years and years now. The same way that her worry will always be there, thin as cheesecloth, draped over the both of them.

“He won’t be,” Chanyeol says with so much conviction that he knows he’s hoping for the opposite thing.

“Alright,” Soojung says. “We’re ready to go.”

When they step foot into the gallery, the host is already booming away the facts and details about the pictures on display. Chanyeol avoids looking at any of them. This is no place to hurt, to let himself be a sculpture of weakness within the four walls encasing everything that’s gained some sort of permanence in time. Jongdae sidles up to them with flutes of white champagne, Zitao hovering behind him. Chanyeol takes a flute and downs the contents. Jongdae chuckles, but Soojung’s gaze is packed with heaviness, and Chanyeol doesn’t want to be pulled down by it. 

“I’ll just go over there,” he says, indicating some vague direction. He feels Soojung’s eyes follow him as he moves through the crowd.

He ends up in a corner of the exhibit, right in front of another print of Baekhyun, but he doesn’t want to look at it. He’s afraid of what he’s going to see. Instead, he reads the title he’d placed on the plaque: _Suspended_.

“Who is this guy, Chanyeol?”

Chanyeol starts. Standing beside him is Kyungsoo, a landscape photographer Chanyeol had met in college but hadn’t quite kept in touch with. Kyungsoo’s received praises and acclaim for his works, the same way Chanyeol has, though they both have never attempted to hold exhibits at the same time. 

“Why do you want to know?” Chanyeol asks, working on maintaining as light a tone as possible. “Do you want a date with him or something?” A pang hits his chest but he ignores it, brushes it into a corner where he doesn’t have to deal with it until later.

“Would you let that happen, I wonder?”

Chanyeol stills. He searches Kyungsoo’s face, but Kyungsoo just keeps on looking at the picture. “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t you know?” Kyungsoo turns his way. “I find that hard to believe. You know it, Chanyeol, it’s clear as day. It’s all over this exhibit.”

Chanyeol chuckles, though he suddenly feels nervous. “I have no idea what you’re saying.”

“Look at your own photo,” Kyungsoo says. “ _Look_ at it, Chanyeol.”

Chanyeol braces himself. He raises his eyes and looks at the print, and for a moment, he’s not here.

He’s traveling back, swimming through the stream of time to that day, that instant Baekhyun had sat on the fire escape and stared up at the sky. Every detail, crisp and sharp on paper that reeks of wanting, of needing; every detail, through Chanyeol’s lens and eyes, varnished with another emotion, budding at the time but now unfurling its petals in his chest. He wants to look away, but at the same time, he’s transfixed.

“I see your love on every photograph,” Kyungsoo says. He sounds so far away. “It’s in everywhere in this exhibit, Chanyeol, it’s so obvious you might as well be shining the light at us.”

“That’s not true,” Chanyeol says, desperate now, the flower still planting its roots in his heart. He wants to tear it out, take it by its stem and _pull_ , prune it before it tangles up with his insides and leaves him a lonely wreck of a man. “You’re mistaken, that’s not --”

He catches motion in the corner of his eye. There’s someone running, turning around the pillar, someone wearing an ocean of a sweater and jeans --

Chanyeol runs after him. He doesn’t know why, but he doesn’t even excuse himself. He simply chases after that sweater, that person, pushing away people and objects; he pushes open the door and almost trips on the steps leading down.

“Baekhyun!” he yells, and it’s painful, and it’s a name ripped right out of his throat, and it’s something he’d never thought he’d be able to say again. “Baekhyun!” 

Baekhyun doesn’t look back. He just keeps running, way beyond Chanyeol’s reach, and Chanyeol doesn’t want him to go. Even after everything, he doesn’t want to unclasp his fingers and let Baekhyun walk free. He wills himself to go faster, to reduce the distance to air, to a breath and a blink -- and he’s just behind Baekhyun now, his hand’s on his shoulder, and he’s pulling him close close _close_.

“Let go of me,” Baekhyun says, his voice sounding like it’s gone through a grinder. “Let go of me, Chanyeol.”

Chanyeol whirls him around, and with a start he realizes that Baekhyun is crying. The shorter guy doesn’t want to meet his eyes. He tries to pull away, but Chanyeol’s grip is steady around his wrists.

“ _Let. Me. Go._ ” Baekhyun’s red in the face and hiccups are breaking out of his words. “You don’t -- it was wrong of me to hope -- just _let go_ , Chanyeol.”

“No,” Chanyeol says, gritting his teeth. “No, I can’t do that, Baekhyun.”

“Why not?” Baekhyun shoots back, and now he looks up with anger blazing a trail in his eyes. “Why not? It was so easy to throw me away, wasn’t it? So easy to just pick me off the street like you do with everyone else, and make me think you cared even the slightest bit. So easy to let me hope that maybe, maybe if I took the chance, maybe you’d feel the same way.”

“Baekhyun,” Chanyeol says, and his heart squeezes once again when Baekhyun resumes his struggle. “Baekhyun, what are you saying?”

“It doesn’t matter what I’m saying,” Baekhyun spits out. “It’s not as if it matters. It’s not as if you’ll love me back.”

Chanyeol doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know how to react, how to come to terms with this -- this -- this confession. He doesn’t know, and it’s the wrong thing to do, because the hope that flickers on Baekhyun’s face turns off again and he stops resisting. The curve of his shoulders slumps forward -- the way, Chanyeol realizes, that they always do when Baekhyun’s given up.

“It’s done, Chanyeol,” Baekhyun says, and Chanyeol tightens his grip.

“It’s not done, Baekhyun,” Chanyeol says. Baekhyun just shakes his head, but Chanyeol cradles the side of Baekhyun’s face with his hand and he pulls him closer, locking their gazes together until they have nowhere else to go. “It’s never been done. It can’t be done when every night I stare at your phone number, wondering how you’re doing and where you’re are, if you’re safe, if you’re smiling, if someone else is making you laugh. It can’t be done when all my photographs right there have my feelings splattered all over them, and now everyone knows, and I don’t care anymore.” His voice lowers. The tears are welling up in Baekhyun’s eyes again. “It can’t be done when we’re right here, when I’ve chased you through the miles and I’m still holding on to you. No, Baekhyun.”

“But you said,” and Baekhyun’s voice cracks as he sniffles, “you said that it wasn’t true --”

“Because,” Chanyeol interrupts, “it hurt. I thought you didn’t feel the same way, and I didn’t want to burden you with it, because the tabloids everywhere will be speculating about it. I thought it would maybe be better to let go of those feelings because they were unrequited anyway -- I thought, Baekhyun, I thought _you_ didn’t love _me_ back.” He takes a breath. Baekhyun’s right in front of him, and he just has one question left. “Am I wrong?”

“You’re wrong,” Baekhyun says. “You are very, very wrong.”

And Chanyeol doesn’t care. There are people gathering around them, news reporters who’ve tracked their chase, and flashes of light splice what little space there is between them, but Baekhyun doesn’t care, either. So he leans in, and at 8:53 pm on a November night, Chanyeol kisses Baekhyun.

 

 

“Chanyeol,” Soojung says, voice cut up by static and long distance. She’s in Italy now, modeling for yet another magazine cover, and Chanyeol can hear a clatter in the background. “Chanyeol, people won’t stop asking me about your and Baekhyun’s love story, it’s irritating.”

Chanyeol smiles. Lying on the bed beside him, fast asleep with his head pillowed in Chanyeol’s arm, is Baekhyun with the moonlight gathered on his eyelids. Chanyeol brushes his lips over his hair.

“Chanyeol, are you _kissing_ him?”

“Relax, Soojung,” Chanyeol says, chuckling. “Alright, this is what you should tell them…”

 


End file.
